ART ANTIQUES IRELAND

Posts Tagged ‘Christie’s’

Masterpieces by Lucio Fontana, Alberto Burri and Thomas Schütte from a private European collection will feature at Christie’s Post War and Contemporary Art evening sale in London on March 6. The group will be led by Lucio Fontana’s Concetto Spaziale, Attese (1965) which is estimated at £8-12 million. The two-metre long white canvas is cut with 24 of Fontana’s iconic vertical slashes, the greatest number he ever committed to a large-scale work. To add a further dimension to the painting Fontana enshrouded it in a highly reflective black lacquer.

Additional highlights include Alberto Burri’s Ferro T (1959) (£3-5 million) a patchwork forged from jagged panes of soldered metal, weathered using fire and the process of oxidation. This is from Burri’s celebrated series of 12 Ferri (‘Irons’), nine of which are housed in museum collections internationally. Thomas Schütte’s Bronzefrau Nr. 7 (2002) (£2-3 million) offers a powerful critique of monumental sculpture: created from bronze and Cor-Ten steel it both mines and undermines classical and Renaissance traditions. Dan Flavin, Anselm Kiefer and Gerhard Richter are also represented in the collection.

André Derain’s Londres: la Tamise au pont de Westminster (1906-07) will highlight Christie’s Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale in London on February 27. One of 29 recorded paintings of London that Derain painted across 1906 and 1907, it comes to auction alongside the exhibition ‘Impressionists and London’ currently on view at London’s Tate Britain. Londres: la Tamise au pont de Westminster is captured from the Albert Embankment, portraying the Thames, the Palace of Westminster, Westminster Bridge and, in the background, the pyramidal silhouette of Whitehall Court.

As with all of the works in this series, the British capital is saturated in radiant colour. The expansive grey waters of the Thames are transformed into a mosaic of shimmering yellow, blue and turquoise; the sunlit sky rendered in an iridescent patchwork of blues and pink. It is estimated at £6-9 million.

Keith Gill, head of sale said: “Among the most iconic works of Fauvism, many of this rare series of London paintings are now housed in museum collections across the world, including the Musée d’Orsay, Paris; Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; and the Tate Gallery, London”

WITH sales of £5.1 billion Christie’s led the global art market in 2017. This is an increase of 26%. Auction sales were up 38%. Digital sales online totalled £165.6 million and seven of the top works of art sold around the world were sold at Christie’s. This included Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi which smashed the world record for any work of art sold at auction when made $450.3 million.

Increased supply at masterpiece level met continued demand as global auction sales increased 38% to £4.6 billion ($5.9 billion, up 33%). Sales in the Americas increased to £2.5 billion, up 68% ($3.2 billion, up 62%), sales in Asia totalled £582.9 million, up 11% ($754.9 million, up 7%), and sales in Europe and the Middle East totalled £1.5 billion, up 16% ($2 billion, up 11%).

Pablo Picasso’s masterpiece Mousquetaire et nu assis(1967) will be a highlight of Christie’s Impressionist & Modern Art evening sale in London on February 27. Estimate:d at £12-18 million it will be part of ‘20th Century at Christie’s’, series of sales from February 20 to March 67. 2018. This is among the first of the triumphant musketeers that appeared in Pablo Picasso’s art in 1967. The iconic figure is accompanied by a sensuous, seated nude.

She is Jacqueline, the artist’s final, great love, muse and wife, whose presence permeated every female figure in this final chapter of Picasso’s life. With one eye towards the Old Masters and another towards contemporary art Picasso shows himself still challenging the history of art, carrying out iconoclastic attacks, plundering the past and doing so in a strikingly fresh, gestural way.

Keith Gill, head of sale, said: “Picasso’s late career was defined by sensuous paintings in which he cast himself as the virile artist alongside his voluptuous lover. The allegorical figures were used by Picasso not only to reference fictitious characters but were a means by which he could situate himself firmly within the art historical canon alongside the likes of Rembrandt, El Greco, Velázquez and Goya. He seemed to have a sense of urgency to his work in this period, as if trying to beat the passage of time, a feeling that is evidenced by the dense brushwork and bold gestures of ‘Mousquetaire et nu assis’. It is a privilege to present the painting as a leading highlight in the Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale.”

A George II gold Irish freedom box is among the highlights of the collection of Peggy and David Rockefeller which Christie’s is touring prior to sales at Christie’s Rockefeller Center in New York in late spring. The freedom box, to the far right of the composite image above, is by William Currie, Dublin and estimated at $30,000-50,000. Christie’s has confirmed additional dates and locations for preview exhibitions of the collection to its flagship galleries in London (February 21 – March 8), Beijing (April 6 – 7), Los Angeles (April 6 – 12), and Shanghai (April 10 – 11). With each stop on the pre-sale tour, additional works of art and objects will be unveiled, revealing new facets of this storied, multi-category collection. The exhibitions, which are open to the public, are sponsored in partnership with private aviation company VistaJet.

As a guide for collectors, Christie’s has launched a special issue of Christie’s Magazine dedicated to the Collection of Peggy and David Rockefeller. The issue re-acquaints readers with the Rockefeller family’s unique place in American history, and their long legacy in the realms of art collecting, commerce, and philanthropy. All of the estate proceeds from the sale of the Collection will benefit established charities.

Christie’s French Post-War and Contemporary Art Sales achieved a combined annual total of 96,553,150 this year, the highest realised to date. Led by Jean-Paul Riopelle’s monumental 1953 painting Untitled, December auctions brought in 21,447,000. The Riopelle made 4,882,500,, a new world record at auction for the artist. There were records too for Friedensreich Hundertwasser’s Ville vue d’au-delà du soleil (523,500) and Pierrette Bloch’s Sans titre (12,50 ).

Paul Nyzam, Head of Evening Auction, Post-War and Contemporary Art, Christie’s, Paris said: “The outstanding totals for the December season follow the success of our October FIAC auctions, which underlined continued growth with a 110% increase on the equivalent sales from 2016.”

El Greco’s Saint Francis and Brother Leo in Meditation was the top lot at Christie’s Old Masters evening sale in London on December 7. From the Collection of Stanford Z. Rothschild, Jr. it sold for £6,871,250. This is the second highest price for the artist at auction.

The sale totalled £21,772,000. There was a new world record for Bartholomäus Spranger with Mercury carrying Psyche to Mount Olympus, which made £3,368,750. The sale saw registered bidders from 30 countries, across five continents.

Henry Pettifer, Head of Christie’s Old Master Paintings EMERI: “2017 is the second consecutive record year for Old Masters at Christie’s. With 78% of lots selling above estimate, tonight’s sale was 93% sold by value, the second highest sell-through rate by value for Old Masters, Christie’s London. The sale proved the healthy demand for 16th and 17th century Dutch and Flemish paintings, demonstrated by the highly competitive bidding for the works by Spranger, Rembrandt, Ruisdael and Teniers, among others. We were pleased to see El Greco’s superb Saint Francis and Brother Leo in Meditation set the second highest price for the artist at auction, and for the new record for the Spranger which is one of the finest mannerist pictures to come to the market in recent memory.”

Sean Scully will carry the flag for Irish art at Christie’s Modern British and Irish art evening sale in London on November 22. Two works by the artist are in the sale. Iris, signed and dated 2005, is estimated at £500,000-800,000 and East Coast Light 2 is estimated at £150,000-250,000.

There is a focus on British Pop artists, including the last painting executed by founding member Pauline Boty, titled BUM alongside work by Peter Blake, Richard Hamilton, David Hockney and Eduardo Paolozzi. Beatitudes of Love 6: Consciousness was painted in1938 by Sir Stanley Spencer during his failed second marriage to Patricia Preece. It is estimated at £1.3-1.8 million. The evening auction will be followed by a day sale on November 23.

That was the night that was at Christie’s in New York. Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi made auction history by selling for $450,312,500 million. This stellar price totally obliterated any previous world record for the most expensive work of art sold at auction. The depiction of Christ as Saviour of the World had been estimated at $100 million. The price reflects the extreme rarity of paintings by Leonardo. Fewer than 20 in existence are acknowledged as being from the artist’s own hand, and all apart from Salvator Mundi are in museum collections.

The inclusion of Salvator Mundi in the landmark London National Gallery 2011-12 exhibition of Leonardo’s surviving paintings — the most complete display of such works ever held — sealed its acceptance as a fully autograph work by Leonardo da Vinci. This came after more than six years of painstaking research and inquiry to document the painting’s authenticity. It was process that began shortly after the work was discovered — heavily veiled with overpaints, long mistaken for a copy — in a small, regional auction in the United States in 2005. Prior to that, it was consigned to a 1958 sale at Sotheby’s where it sold for £45.

The painting was first recorded in the Royal collection of King Charles I (1600-1649), and thought to have hung in the private chambers of Henrietta Maria – the wife of King Charles I – in her palace in Greenwich, and was later in the collection of Charles II. It was next recorded in a 1763 sale by Charles Herbert Sheffield, the illegitimate son of the Duke of Buckingham, who put it into auction following the sale of what is now Buckingham Palace to the king. It then disappeared until 1900, when it was acquired by Sir Charles Robinson as a work attributed to Leonardo’s follower, Bernardino Luini, for the Cook Collection. By this time, its authorship by Leonardo, origins and illustrious royal history had been forgotten, and Christ’s face and hair had been overpainted and obscured. In the dispersal of the Cook Collection, it was ultimately consigned to a sale at Sotheby’s in 1958 where it sold for £45.

The previous record for the most expensive work of art at auction was held by Picasso’s Les Femmes d’Alger (Version ‘O’) which achieved $179,364,992.

Christie’s Post War and Contemporary art evening sale totalled $785,942,250, including buyers premium. This was the second highest total for a various owner Post War and Contemporary Art evening sale at Christie’s. There were 14 artists records for, among others, Adam Pendelton, Philippe Parreno, Kerry James Marshall, Vija Celmins, Lee Krasner, Hans Hofmann, William Baziotes, Julian Schnabel and Isamu Noguchi.

UPDATE: It was announced in December that the painting is destined for The Louvre in Abu Dhabi which opened its doors on November 8 this year. It has been suggested that the work will be lent to other museums in the Middle East and Asia.

Laboureur dan un champ by Vincent van Gogh was the top lot at Christie’s Impressionist and Modern evening sale in New York last night. It sold for $81.3 million in a sale that brought in $479.3 million. Altogether 68 lots were offered and 60 were sold. This was the second highest total for a various owner sale of Impressionist and Modern art at Christie’s. Fernand Leger’s Contraste de Formes sold for $70 million.